Intuitive Induction Research Articles

Aristotle and Hume on the Idea of Natural Necessity

There is a tension in scholarship about Aristotle’s philosophy, especially his philosophy of science, between empiricist readings and rationalist readings. A prime site of conflict is Posterior Analytics II.19 where Aristotle, after having said that we know the first principles by induction suddenly says that we know them by nous. Those taking the rationalist side find in nous something like a faculty of “intuition” and are led to the conclusion that by “induction” Aristotle has some kind of idea of “intuitive induction”. Those taking the empiricist side resist this temptation but then struggle to explain how we can know first principles by induction and usually end by relegating induction to a mere subsidiary role; well-known problems of induction, with which Aristotle shows some familiarity, militate against taking anything we learn from induction to be a first principle or even certain. I am on the side of the empiricists, and would like to adopt as a methodological assumption that no concept of intuition occurs in any of Aristotle’s works. That is a far more ambitious project than I am attempting here, however. Here, I want to defend a non-intuitive, enumerative kind of induction against a raft of criticisms raised against it in the collection Shifting the Paradigm: Alternative Approaches to Induction (Biondi & Groarke 2014). I want to defend the position that Hume and Aristotle have basically the same conception of induction and of what it can and cannot do. What it cannot do, for both, is prove natural necessities. A paradigm shift is neither necessary nor desirable for a proper understanding of Aristotle’s philosophy of science. Aristotle is still the empiricist philosopher we all thought he was before reading Posterior Analytics II.19

Platonic Forehand versus Aristotelian Smash - the use of computers as macroscopes in knowing the social world

This paper draws on Desrosie ¤ res, Hayles and Tukey in arguing for an exploratory approach to the use of numerical taxonomy and related approaches in quantitative social research. It asserts that rather than trying to develop algorithm (either in the form of equation sets or game rules) based representations which abstract 'variables' as analogies of Newtonian forces, we should centre on cases and deal with classifications. Then trajectories can be explored in terms of changes both in the classification location of particular cases and changes in the actual form of the classification sets themselves. This approach seems to correspond with Aristotle's notion of intuitive induction with computing technology understood as extending the cognitive capacities of the taxonomist.

Deduction and Intuitive Induction

Deduction and Intuitive Induction

A Computer's Intuition

To the Editor:— In a recent feature (From Other Pages,JAMA189, July 20, 1964, adv p 80) it is stated that computers cannot play a I disagree; computers do use intuitive induction or the hunch. In fact, the computer can guess at a diagnosis on a percentage basis far more accurately than any individual. The is really a form of less likely differential diagnosis. A well-educated (programmed) computer can evaluate these lesser possibilities on a sound mathematical basis. A scale of zero to ten can be used, zero meaning the diagnosis is not possible and ten referring to an absolute diagnosis. The figure two or three in this scale would be in the hunch zone. Its presence in computer thinking is quite real. Physicians are developing a poor attitude toward automation. The computer will never replace the doctor-patient relationship, but it can help us in untold ways,